Some additional details: assuming that the opponents (infantry, cavalry etc.) are coming in a general direction and more than a thousand strong.
The archers are armed with longbows or crossbows. Do the archers pick a target of their own, and just send as many arrows in a general direction?
Hey, no-one’s responded to your post so I thought I would.
I don’t have any special knowledge, but it seems like common sense would tell you that a bowman knows his limitations. Sure, you can hit a target 50 meters away, but you also know that you can’t reliably hit one 600 meters away.
So, if there is a massed army advancing then you should take your shots as early as you can. This means firing the arrows up into the sky so they reach the perfect arc to gain the best distance possible and then fall on your intended target. That’s not aiming, but just firing into the crowd.
Now that you’ve shot a few volleys and your enemy has moved closer, you can use a smaller arc and, again, hope for the best by just firing it into the crowd.
Once the enemy moves into a range where you know you can hit a target, then you start aiming.
Historically, the most effective use of archers in battle has been to have a mass of archers shoot in volleys to a given range. They train to be able to put their arrows, say, 250 yards out, 200 yards out, etc., and that way can keep putting down showers of arrows against advancing cavalry. At least, it worked great that way at Crecy in 1346 and several battles after that.
Of course, there’s also horse archers, siege archery and whatnot. But I’d guess it seldom happened in battle that an archer would be able to realistically pick an individual enemy as a target.
It sounds like the Robin Hood myths’ depiction of an archery contest misses the mark (heh).
The above suggests that a skilled archer would be proficient in hitting that range, not a target fifty yards away. Hunters, yes, would value target shooting, but wouldn’t a military unit/leader place a higher value on horseshoe-like skill?
English longbows would frequently aim at area of the battlefield to make it ‘rain arrows’ upon any poor sap who happened to be in that area, as opposed to aiming at individuals - the bow just wasn’t that accurate.
If you accept wikipedia as a cite,
No reason the two skills should be incompatible. When the enemy’s horseman is bearing down on you, accuracy at 50 yards could be quite useful.
They can be surprisingly accurate at that range. Google ‘clout shooting’ for more info.
… thinking about moving your butt behind the pikes real quicklike.
Just saying. 
Clout shooting is today’s version of Medieval combat shooting: shooting at a horizontal target defined by concentric rings on the ground etc. some 120 yards or more distant. To say clout shooters don’t aim would be erroneous. An experienced archer (like any Medieval bowman going into battle) knows his arrows’ behavior and range inside out, having shot thousands upon thousands of shots at every conceivable distance, up to maximum range, adjusting elevation as needed. Hitting a group of men at around 200 yards with a Medieval warbow is a reality, not fantasy or dumb luck. Heavy shafts at even that range have fearsome penetrative qualities. Any hit piercing flesh is a goody, as you only need to make the opponent uncapable of attacking back, not necessarily kill him on the spot.
Individual human (simulation) targets at our primitive bow shoots seem to attract a fair load of arrows up to about 50 yards or so. But people shooting there are amateurs with toy-like gear, for the most part. Confirmed single-arrow kills on big game animals have historically been made with wooden longbows and arrows up to around 200 yards. But these are exceptional, many would say unethical feats.
Emphasis added. Horse-archers operated pretty much the same way - massed, elevated, unaimed fire at predetermined target ranges was pretty much the standard tactic of the Mongols. Being highly mobile they could mix this with other tactics such as caracole fire, ‘Parthian shots’ and feigned retreats. But the basics were the same. Drop a withering hail of arrows on enemy formations until they were disrupted enough to be vulnerable to a charge.
Massed archers shoot in a direction, not aiming as in an archery contest. War bows have much more difficult draws and make target shooting difficult. My post is my site, but when I investigated archery several years ago, I remember seeing this stuff on the internet. Sigh.
Prior to the 20th century (and a little before that in very limited circles), archery bows had no sights on them. Depending on the type of shooting to be done and the person shooting, getting an arrow into a target required either an intimate knowledge of your arrows’ trajectory or a system called point-of-aim (using a pre-set object on the target range to indirectly aid in hitting the target, a 19th century innovation).
I’m not sure what exactly you mean by “not aiming as in an archery contest”. Present-day target archery certainly has very little to do with the instinctive aiming methods prior generations of bowmen used, regardless of bow size or strength. An instinctive archer does not conciously aim, letting instead his eyes, muscles and brain to quickly make the necessary adjustments during the draw. Many instinctive archers would claim they don’t aim at any distance. Fact is, they do, they just don’t think about aiming while shooting.
Shooting a warbow takes a different technique altogether compared to formal target archery (I’ve built and used longbows up to 100 lbs. in pull, a mid-weight warbow by 16th century standards). But the claim that Medieval bowmen didn’t aim their long-range arrows is false. As distance increases, aiming changes, but it takes a whole lot more than “shooting in a direction” to succeed.
SS,
I get that you’ve done some internet research on the subject several years back. Clear-cut distinctions like massed archers versus target archers are a handy way to sum up complex phenomena while at the same time clouding them up. How many instinctive long-range shots have you made with period archery gear? How many hours have you spent on the moors, picking far-away targets as you go and letting fly? How many clout shoots have you attended? Sigh.
Unethical? Color me confused. How is it unethical? If the wound is such as to cause prolonged suffering, maybe unethical - but is that your meaning, and how could the shooter know such an outcome is likely?
It would not surprise me if some nobleman/generals kept a few accuracy shooters among their personal guard. Any history of this?
A former archery instructor used to compare it with throwing a stone at something. Even though most people would be quite good at it, they would be unable to tell how they actually manage to hit their target. We certainly don’t consciously estimate the distance, think about how we should move our arm, or when exactly we should open our hand and release and stone.
The comment was about archery kills of large animals at fairly long range – if your first shot isn’t quite good enough, the target could easily end up wounded but still able to escape before you can take a second shot.
Unethical in the sense that hitting an animal lethally (meaning a quick death, not just any death, by today’s standards) at extreme arrow range is highly unlikely. No-one is accurate enough to be able to claim that hitting the vitals (heart/lung area) of an animal at 150-200 yards is the expected outcome. Even if one was, the arrow is going to take a couple seconds to get there, allowing the animal to move in any direction pre-impact. An arrow slicing through the gut or the leg of an elk isn’t going to kill it quick, and will most likely lead to a carcass left unfound in the woods.